THEATRE
The Ghost Writers. By Ted Allan. (Arts.) talents are being wasted, but also that he s expected to put his name to scripts written by someone else who has been '61ack-listed' for refusing to answer questions before a Con- gressional committee. Mike Bedford is revolted by this situation, but is in debt to the filet tycoon and so cannot just walk out, This Is the basic plot, and it is worked out with great complication to the accompaniment of perjury, blackmail, bribery and the usual accessories of transatlantic big business (micro'
pbgnes beneath the desks of your employees, etc:). Now this picture may be somewhat blackened; the plot may be a good deal too complex; the characters over-emphasised. But at least Mr. Allan has succeeded in writing a play that is dramatic and, moreover, a play that is dramatic about politics. It is quite impossible to write a political play in this country these days (I suppose because there arc no longer any political issues to build it round), and when the genuine article comes to us from elsewhere we should not complain because we do not agree with all that it says.
A more serious objection than that Mr. Allan is unfair to Hollywood is that, compared with Mr. Odets, the happenings external to his liberal characters are not sufficiently motivated by their own internal reactions. Mr. Odets's neurotic actor owed some of his troubles to his own moral weakness, and, as well as showing greater theatrical skill, this may be a more accurate diagnosis of American liberalism. Rein ne vient du bon Dieu tout seal. On the other hand, what a treat it is to he presented with intellectuals who behave like ordinary human beings instead of self-pitying masses of neurosis. Here Mr. Allan is helped by Jerry Stovin and Gordon Tanner, who play the Canadian script-writer and Nick Lovell, the black-listed one, with simplicity, charm and an appearance of actually being able to read and write that is fairly rare in the presentation of creative talent on the stage. George Coulouris makes a perfectly horrible figure of the tycoon—a man of talent (possibly) destroyed by his own lust for power and money. What is original about the variety he represents is the fearful jollying along, the 'old boy' mode of address, the back-slapping and the hand-shaking, the calculatedly sickly sentiment (I'll never forget this, Mike') which corrodes all normal emotion. These tycoons will 'old boy' you till they have all the money out of your pockets and then they will 'old boy' you into prison or the electric chair. Mr. Coulouris gives such a gruesome truth to this portrayal that we can forgive his occasional fluffing of lines. The rest of the cast were, on the whole, up to their parts. Andree Melly in particular was charming as Mrs. Bedford. This was a play worth seeing and well worth putting on.
ANTHONY HAR'ELEY
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